Compact Media Format (CMF) is used to store and transfer ring tones and audio/visual presentations. The CMF format is very similar in structure to standard musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) format with extensions for embedding media objects such as images, audio and text. CMF inherently represents the timing information for playback of included media objects. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is an XML language that describes the layout and synchronization of media objects in a presentation and is standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium.
Media objects and timing information need to be extracted from a CMF file and restructured into a form consistent with SMIL grammar. The start time and duration of playback of each media object can be determined by parsing the CMF file. However, the use of repeated sections, or loops, within the CMF file becomes a complicating factor because the loop boundaries may occur within media objects, which are handled internally by a CMF player. SMIL does have the capability to repeat playback of media objects, but not with the capability of a CMF player that has random access to the media on a very fine time scale. SMIL references media objects as a whole, although it can specify sub-regions, and passes them to a decoder or player that does not allow random access during playback.